Putting nice thick layers

It's getting close to the final stage. I started mixing more paint and putting thicker layers. Then I realized the bottom of the cloud should be much darker. I need to fix that. Then I want to make sun-lit part of the mountains brighter in contrast with shadowed foreground. And then I guess I'm done with this piece.

Painting Trip to NW corner of Olympic peninsula

Today I came back from 3 day painting trip to NW corner of Olympic peninsula. It was a very nice one and I want to go back in the near future. I painted at Cape Flattery (left pic) Saturday evening before Sun set into Pacific Ocean. It was nice interacting with many people while I was painting at the end of a trail. As Sun moved toward the horizon the colors of cliffs and trees kept changing but I enjoyed watching and capturing them. On Sunday, I hiked 2 mile tough trail for an hour to Shi Shi Beach but weather wasn't so good (right pic). It was hard to see the colors of the rocks and ocean. Then this morning I stopped by La Push and took some photos for future painting. Weather was better today than yesterday when the Peninsula got some rain while Seattle didn't. I couldn't carry three canvas so I didn't paint today.

Overall, I got some inspiration about seascapes. I'll try producing at least a couple of studio paintings out of this trip after finishing "dragon cloud".

Leg movement

Since whole this painting is about movement, I've been working on the shapes of front legs in detail at this early stage. Once I got those shapes right, that would define the rest of painting and I can focus more on colors later instead.

Slowly making/adjusting shapes

Not much progress I could make this weekend. Mainly due to a four hour shift I took at the Gallery on both Sat and Sun, in addition to a start of a mild gout symptom on my left foot.
But I managed to add some more shapes in the foreground and adjust the dragon cloud shape, which was leaning too much left.

More paints on clouds

Since the clouds are much thicker, I put more paints on that part. Made them more colorful and subtle value variations. After all the clouds are much lighter compared to the ground. I'll go back to the ground to add more shapes and patterns.

Initial Rough Block-in

Initial rough block-in with 1" brush. It didn't lose sketching fortunately. The horse and girl shape have lots of curvature and difficult to paint in with this brush so I guess I need to change the brush for the part.

Rosario Bay on-site painting

It was hot clear day on Sat when I went there in the evening and spent about an hour to paint this. Sun was reflecting on water and shiny and I couldn't figure out the colors of water. I tried some ripples near the rocks but it was not enough. Probably I needed to decide the main color first and mixed it in batch, which I didn't. I'll try a seascape probably in two weeks when I took a Monday off. I might go further north to Washington park of Anacortes, which is free. The Rosario Bay park is inside of a state park and I forgot to bring my discover pass. I had to park just outside of the park border.

A little progress

Not much but I'm making some progress on highlighted mountains by putting more color/value variations. Before getting into too much details, I'll move to the clouds.

Next Animal Piece

I finished "Porsche" on the last day of July. Then recently an old friend of mine in Japan contacted me and offered buying two horse paintings; "White Horses" and "Side by Side". Now I need to paint more animal paintings, especially horse paintings. So I picked this photo I took at the county fairground in Langley on Whidbey Island. This is actually a horse and a girl in an appear-to-be local competition. I liked the angle the horse and girl were leaning in while they were making two 360 degree turns around a pole. The horse's right hind leg is blurred in the photo due to the fast movement, which could be a good challenge for me.